Budget slashes force professor and associate dean to take on third position as power source.
Gym-going students at the University of Tulsa will surely recognize the interim dean as the man overlooking the fitness center from the second floor elliptical machines seemingly every hour of the day bar 15 minutes of stretching on the turf. Upperclassmen may also recall his previous regimen, wherein he alternated between incline walking on the treadmill, flat benching 135 for 15, and doing strict bodyweight dips for roughly three hours.
Several students of the interim dean, while maintaining their appreciation for Drever as a professor, have expressed futility in avoiding the universally awkward experience of an encounter with a professor outside of class. Jack Fuller, a then-student of Drever, said in 2024: “I’ve given up trying to go at a different time than him. Even if I go right after his class, he’s somehow already there.” Other students have corroborated the professor’s seemingly instantaneous commute: “there’s literally no way this should be possible,” explained physics major and Drever student Jobe Michaelson; “He would have had to exceed the speed of light at least four times this week alone.”
Indeed, an attempt by The Collegian to follow the professor from his classroom to the gym in order to see just how he arrived so quickly fell apart; a hired private investigator began tailing Drever as he finished teaching a class this past Wednesday, waiting for him to make a break for the Collins Fitness Center. However, after following the professor through two administrative meetings, three actual hours of office hours, and another class, it was “getting a little creepy” for the $7.32 The Collegian was able to pay the investigator, so they vouched to wait at the gym for their mark to arrive. Upon entering CFC, they were astonished to find Professor Drever already on the elliptical, with an elapsed time of one hour and 32 minutes displayed on the machine. The P.I. then sprinted back to the interim dean’s last known location, only to find the professor had beat them there and was already helping a student with a term paper.
In an exclusive interview, Professor Drever was apparently unaware of his reputation as a gym fixture. “I’m really not there all that often,” he insisted. “I always spend at least five hours a day working on my article,” referring to his article critiquing Stephen Wolfe’s The Case For Christian Nationalism from an Augustinian standpoint, “then there’s two spent in class, two spent grading… sevenish, eightish hours in faculty meetings, another four of office hours… I try to spend at least three or four hours of quality time with my daughter every day, one hour of prayer, and then there’s three hours spent reading, plus maybe an hour or two of daily commuting. So really that just leaves about three for working out.” Professor Drever declined to comment on how many total hours he had just listed, only saying, “oh I’m not a math professor.” When asked what it was he liked so much about the elliptical machine, Professor Drever deliberated for over a minute before replying “nothing.”
Professor Drever at 12:30pm Photo by: Aiden Hoogstra
The workouts are apparently entirely utilitarian acts of discipline, verifying the grimace of doom and dismay he wears in the 20 to 24 hours a day spent on the elliptical. “It’s no fun but hey, you’ve got to do it,” explained Drever with a shrug. He also cited his playlist — Gregorian chants interspersed every two hours by the words “fortsetzen sie pedalieren!” (continue to pedal) — as great motivation.
Professor Drever at 7:15pm Photo by: Aiden Hoogstra
The new, electricity-producing elliptical machine will be installed in a windowless room in the basement of Keplinger hall. Unlike CFC, the new location will have neither air conditioning nor heat and will be lit by a single, extraordinarily loud fluorescent light, a switch for which the University of Tulsa will not be compensating Dr. Drever in any way. Current estimates project roughly 18% of TU’s annual budget to be freed up after fully switching to a Drever-powered energy model with an expected 40,000 kilowatt-hours of reserve energy left over. When asked if this would result in lower electricity costs for students living in campus apartments, TU’s Chief Financial Officer Jeff Nevins replied “no.”
